A Taste for Death (38 page)

left despising yourself for your inhumanity. He said:

'I suppose this room is the place of last resort.'

It was Musgrave who understood him the quicker. 'Nine times out of ten that's what it is. They've ex-hausted the patience of their families, DHSS staff, local authorities, friends. Then it's here. "I voted for you. Do something." Some Members like it, of course. Find it the most fascinating part of the job. They're the social workers manqug. I suspect he didn't. What he tried to do, seemed almost obsessed with at times, was explaining to people the limits of government power, any government. Re-member the last debate on the inner cities? I was in the public gallery. There was a lot of suppressed anger in his irony. "If I understand the Honourable Member's somewhat confused argument the Government are asked to ensure equality of intelligence, talent, health, energy and wealth while, at the same time, abolishing original sin as from the beginning of the next financial year. What divine providence has singularly failed to do, Her Majesty's Government are to achieve by Statutory Order." The House didn't much like it. Not their kind of humour.'

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He added:

'It was a lost battle anyway, educating the electorate in the limits of executive power. No one wants to believe it. And anyway, in a democracy there's always an opposition

to tell them that anything is possible.'

The General said:

'He was a conscientious constituency MP, but it took a lot out of him, more than we realized. I think he was sometimes torn between compassion and irritation.'

Musgrave jerked open the drawer of a filing cabinet, and pulled out a file at random:

'Take this one, spinster, aged 52. In the middle of the change and feeling like hell. Dad dead. Mum at home and virtually bedridden, demanding, incontinent, getting senile. No hospital bed, and Mum wouldn't go voluntarily even if there were. Or this one. Two kids, both of them 19. She gets pregnant, they marry. Neither set of parents like it. Now they're living with the in-laws in a small terraced house. No privacy. Can't make love. Mum will hear through the walls. Baby squalling. Family saying "I told you so". No hope of a council house for another three years, maybe longer. And that's typical of what he got every Saturday. Find me a hospital bed, a house, work. Give me money, give me hope, give me love. It's partly what the job is all about, but I think he found it frus-trating. I'm not saying he wasn't sympathetic to the genuine cases.'

The General said quietly:

'All the cases are genuine. Misery always is.'

He gazed out of the window to where the drizzle had now strengthened to steady rain, and then said:

'Perhaps we should have found him a more cheerful room.'

Musgrave expostulated:

'But the Member has always used this room for his

surgery, General, and it's only once a week.'

The General said quietly:

'Nevertheless, when we get the new Member he should have something better.'

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Musgrave capitulated without rancour.

'We could oust George. Or use that front room on the top floor for the surgery. But then the elderly would have to manage the stairs. I don't see how we could rehouse the bar.'

Dalgliesh half-expected him to call at once for plans and begin the reallocation, his own concerns half-for-gotten. He said:

'Did his resignation come as a surprise?'

It was Musgrave who answered:

'Absolutely. A complete shock. A shock and a betrayal. It's no good beating about the bush, General. It's a bad

time for a by-election, and he must have known.'

The General said:

'Hardly a betrayal. We've never seen ourselves as a marginal seat.'

'Anything under fifteen thousand is marginal these days.

He should have soldiered on until the election.' Dalgliesh asked:

'Did he explain his reasons? I take it that he did see you both, he didn't merely write.'

Again it was Musgrave who answered:

'Oh he saw us all right. Actually deferred writing to the Chancellor until he'd told us. I was on holiday - my usual short autumn break - and he had the decency to wait until I was back. Came up here late last Friday, Friday the thirteenth appropriately enough. He said that it wouldn't be right for him to continue as our Member. It was time that his life took a different turn. Naturally I asked what he meant by a different turn. "You're l Member of Parliament," I said. "You're not driving a bloody bus." He said that he didn't know yet. He hadn't been shown. "Hadn't been shown by whom?" I asked. He said "God". Well, there's not much a man can say to that. Nothing like an answer like that for putting a stopper o rational discussion.'

'How did he seem?'

'Oh, perfectly calm, perfectly normal. Too calm. That's what was so odd about it. A bit eerie really, wouldn't you say, General?'

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The General said very quietly:

'He looked to me like a man released from pain, physical pain. Pale, drawn, but very peaceful. You can't mistake the look.'

'Oh, he was peaceful enough. Obstinate too. You couldn't argue. His decision had nothing to do with poli-tics, though. We did at least establish that. I asked him outright. "Are you disillusioned with policy, with the Party, with the PM, with us?" He said it was nothing like that. He said: "It's nothing to do with the Party. It's myself I have to change." He seemed surprised by the question, almost amused as if it were irrelevant. Well, it wasn't irrelevant to me. The General and I have given a lifetime of service to the Party. It matters to us. It's not some kind of game, a trivial pursuit that you can pick up and put down when you're bored. We deserved a better ex-planation and a bloody sight more consideration than we got. He seemed almost to resent having to talk about it. We could have been discussing arrangements for the summer fte.'

He began pacing the narrow room, his outrage a pal-pable force. The General said mildly:

'I'm afraid we were no help to him. None at all.'

'He wasn't asking for help, was he? Or for advice. He'd gone to a higher power for that. It's a pity he ever set foot in that church. Why did he, anyway? D'you know?' He shot the question at Dalgliesh like an accusation. Dalgliesh said mildly:

'Out of an interest in Victorian church architecture apparently.'

'Pity he didn't take up fishing or stamp collecting. Oh well, he's dead, poor devil. No point in feeling bitter now.'

Dalgliesh said: 'You saw that article in the Paternoster Review, of course?'

Musgrave had got himself under control. He said:

'I don't read that kind of journal. IfI want book reviews I get them from the Sunday papers.' His tone suggested that he was occasionally given to such odd indulgencies.

'But someone read it and cut it out; it was round the

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constituency pretty sharply. The General's view was that it was actionable.'

General Nollinge said:

'I thought that it might be. I advised him to consult his

lawyer. He said he'd think about it.'

Dalgliesh said:

'He did more than that. He showed it to me.'

'Asked you to investigate, did he?' Musgrave's tone was sharp.

'Not really. He wasn't specific.'

'Exactly. He wasn't specific about anything in those last few weeks.'

He added:

'Of course, when he first told us that he'd written to the PM and was applying for the Chiltern Hundreds, we remembered that Review article and braced ourselves for the scandal. Ouite wrong, of course. Nothing as human or understandable. There's one odd thing, though, which we thought we'd better mention. Now that he's dead it can't do any harm. It happened on the night that girl was

drowned. Diana Something-or-other.' Dalgliesh said: 'Diana Travers.'

'That's right. He turned up here that night, well, early morning really. He didn't arrive until well after midnight but I was still here working on some papers. Something or someone had scratched his face. It was superficial, but deep enough to have bled. The scab had just formed. It could have been a cat, I suppose, or he may have fallen into a

rosebush. Equally the claws could have been a woman's.' 'Did he give you any explanation?'

'No. He didn't mention it and neither did I, either the or later. Berowne had a way of making it impossible for you to ask unwelcome questions. It couldn't have had anything to do with the girl, of course. Apparently, hc wasn't dining at the Black Swan that night. But afterward when we read that article, it struck me as an odd coin-cidence.'

It was indeed, thought Dalgliesh. He asked, because the

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question was necessary, not because he expected any useful information, whether anyone in the constituency could have known that Berowne would be in St Matthew's Church on the night of his death. Catching Musgrave's sharp, suspicious glance and the General's pained frown, he added:

'We have to consider the possibility that this was a planned murder, that the killer knew he would be there. If Sir Paul told someone in the constituency - telephoned perhaps - there has to be the chance that the conversation

was overheard or passed on unwittingly.'

Musgrave said:

'You're not suggesting that he was killed by an ag grieved constituent? A bit far-fetched, surely.'

'But not impossible.'

'Aggrieved constituents write to the local press, cancel their subs and threaten to vote $DP next time. Can't see this as political in any sense. Damn it, man, he'd resigned his seat. He was out, finished, spent, no danger to anyone. After that nonsense in the church no one was going to take him seriously any more.'

The General's soft voice broke in:

'Not even the family knew where he was that night. It would be strange if he told someone here when he hadn't told them.'

'How do you know, General?'

'Mrs Hurrell rang Campden Hill Square shortly after eight thirty and spoke to the housekeeper, Miss Matlock. At least, I understand that it was a young man who answered the telephone but he handed her over to Miss Matlock. Wilfred Hurrell was the agent here. He died at three o'clock the next morning in St Mary's Hospital, Paddington. Cancer, poor devil. He was devoted to Be-rowne and Mrs Hurrell rang Campden Hill Square be-cause he was asking for him. Berowne had told her to ring at any time. He'd see that he could always be reached. That's what I find so odd. He knew that Wilfred hadn't long to go, yet he didn't leave a number or an address. That wasn't like him.'

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Musgrave said:

'Betty Hurrell rang me afterwards to see if he were in the constituency. I wasn't at home. I hadn't got back from London by then, but she spoke to my wife. She couldn't help her, of course. A bad business.'

Dalgliesh gave no sign that the call wasn't news to him. He asked:

'Did Miss Matlock say that she'd ask any of the family whether they knew how to contact Sir Paul?'

'She just told Mrs Hurrell that he wasn't at home and that no one in the house knew where he was. Mrs Hurrell could hardly press the matter. Apparently he left home shortly after ten thirty and never returned. I called at the house just before lunch hoping to catch him, but he never

came back. I expect they told you I was there.'

The General said:

'I tried to reach him later, just before six o'clock, to make an appointment for the next day. I thought it might be helpful if we could have a quiet talk. He wasn't at home then. Lady Ursula answered the telephone. She said

she'd look at his diary and ring back.'

'Are you sure, General?'

'That I spoke to Lady Ursula? Oh yes. Usually Miss

Matlock answers, but sometimes one gets Lady Ursula.' 'Are you sure that she said she'd consult the diary?' 'She may have said that she'd see if he were free and ring back. Something like that. Naturally I assumed that meant she would consult his diary. I said not to worry if it

was any trouble. She's crippled with arthritis, you know.' 'Did she ring back?'

'Yes, about ten minutes later. She said that Wednesday morning seemed all right, but she'd ask Berowne to ring me and confirm next morning.'

Next morning. That suggested that she knew that her son wouldn't be back that night. More importantly, if she had, indeed, gone down to the study and had consulted the diary, then it had been there in the study drawer shortly after six on the day of Berowne's death. And at six o'clock, according to Father Barnes, he had arrived at the

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Vicarage. Here at last could be the vital clue linking the murder with Campden Hill Square. This had been a carefully planned killing. The murderer had known where to find the diary, had taken it with him to the church, had partly burned it in an attempt to add verisimilitudeto the suicide theory. And that placed the heart of the murder firmly in Berowne's household. But wasn't that where he had always known that it lay?

He recalled that moment in Lady Ursula's sitting room when he had revealed the diary. The clawed hands shri-velled with age tightening on the plastic. The frail body frozen into immobility. So she had known. Shocked as she was, her mind had still been working. But would any mother shield her son's murderer? Under one circumstance he thought it possible that this mother might. But the truth was probably less complicated and less sinister. She couldn't believe that anyone she personally knew had been capable of this particular crime. She could accept only two possibilities. Either her son had killed himself or, more likely and more acceptably, his murder had been the work of casual unpremeditated violence. If Lady Ursula could bring herself to believe this, then she would see any con-nection with Campden Hill Square as irrelevant, a po-tential source of scandal and, worse, a damaging diversion of police energies from their job of finding the real killer. But he would have to question her about that telephone call. He had never in his professional life been afraid of a' witness or a suspect. But this was one interview to which he wasn't looking forward. But if the diary had been in the desk at six o'clock, then at least Frank Musgrave was in the clear. He had left Campden Hill Square before two. But his suspicion of Musgrave had immediately struck him as an irrelevance. And then another thought, possibly equally irrelevant, fell into his mind. What was it that Wilfred Hurrell, lying on his deathbed, had been so anxi-ous to say to Paul Berowne? And was it possible that someone had been determined that he shouldn't have the opportunity to say it?